Anarchy Online. I was convinced to play by a friend in a shopping centre. "Isn't it shit?" I asked. "No, it's quite good," he replied. There was something in the understatement that caught my attention, and I immediately bought the game and started drooling. A secret of mine that I rarely share is that I used to play Dungeons and Dragons as a child. And when I say child, I'm being generous to myself. I played them from thirteen to fifteen; I was only saved by a very special alcohol called Thunderbird. A more shameful secret, and one that I would only tell when I am trying most desperately to be disarming, is that I used to buy other role-playing games simply to read the rules. I liked seeing how people reduced genuine situations (as far as trying to smooth-talk a robot is a genuine situation) into manageable, dice-rollable scenarios. This may make you laugh, sneer, want to adopt me or place my body on the floor and plant a boot in my neck. I just wanted to understand people, daddy. So you'll see that a fictional world, full of people who clearly have the same impulse to watch numbers that define them slowly increase as I do, would appeal. So my friend saying "no, it's quite good" was simply the excuse that I needed. My character? He is called Bugner, named after my favourite boxer to appear alongside Julian Clary in The Baby Juice Express. I am a Solitus Meta-Physicist. I am fat, and of average height. I start my voyage - nay, odyssey - with a purple shield that looks like a handbag. I approach a creature that looks like a weasel. It attacks me. I try to run away, and press the button to sit down. To my credit, I must look very philosophical about my fate, and were I not dead, I would probably see people looking on with a sense of spiritual envy. I know how it works. I need to get weapons and spells. For that, I need experience points and whatever this crazy world of lightning-fast weasels uses for currency. And for both these things, I must kill stuff.